Opinion: Why we love to see Aishwarya Rai get fat

A lot of stuff pops up in my Social reader newsfeed on Facebook — and a majority of the time, these posts are about Bollywood. Recently, I’ve noticed a large number of people reading posts about “bulging” Aishwarya Rai and Lara Dutta and a not-so-size-zero Kareena Kapoor. Why do we all love to click and read these stories? What is it about seeing actresses get fat that makes them so irresistible to watch?

Perhaps it is our own inadequacies as “normal looking women”? When we see an actress get fat, it makes them normal too. It takes them from being invincibly size zero to being like us – people who need to think about what they are going to wear, because not everything will look outstanding on our “normal” shaped bodies.

I’m guessing actresses have hormones. So when they sign up to act in films, they don’t sign a lifelong contract to remain skinny forever — and they especially don’t sign up to go back to a size zero after they have babies. There are many women who’ve done it successfully – Malaika, Amrita, Karisma all come to mind. And then there are others who’ve let things take their time – Aishwarya for instance. So let’s cut these women a break — let’s allow them to look the way they want without having a large audience sniggering about it all the time. We don’t talk about men getting fat after they get married, so why do we care so much about this?

Aishwarya epitomizes the perfect woman image. For time immemorial, she has been the perfect woman – the perfect face, body, career, family, husband, in-laws and so on. So for the first time, when she shows herself as being physically “imperfect”, as defined by our obsessive fashion magazines, we print news story after news story about how much she is “glowing in motherhood”, with the inevitable sub-text of “battling the bulge”. We devour her pictures, appeasing our minds that this perfect woman is somewhat normal too. Like us.

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